The Inventory of King Henry VIII: Arms, Armour and Ordnance Edited by Maria Hayward, and Philip Ward On 25 January 1547 Henry VIII died at the palace of Whitehall and in the months that followed, all his possessions, including his arms, armour and ordnance, were inventoried. The resulting manuscript provides a unique insight into the…
Holbein’s Wit. Pictorial Ingenuity in Renaissance Art
Holbein’s Wit Pictorial Ingenuity in Renaissance Art Alexander Marr Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/8–1543) is renowned as an outstandingly realistic painter—the acme of Renaissance naturalism. In fact, he was a purveyor of cunning ambiguity. Holbein’s Wit: Pictorial Ingenuity in Renaissance Art reveals the artist at play, juggling the uncertainties and paradoxes that arise in the enterprise…
The Lutheran Middle Ages
The Lutheran Middle Ages The Survival of Medieval Art in Protestant Churches in Germany By Justin Kroesen The wealth of medieval art found in Germany’s Protestant churches is unparalleled; contrary to what is generally believed, Lutherans were often tolerant to medieval church interiors, maintaining or altering the use of furnishings and images or simply accepting…
Rubens’s Questions. Religion, Paragone, and the Ontology of Painting
Rubens’s Questions Religion, Paragone, and the Ontology of Painting By Koenraad Jonckheere Rubens’s Questions: Religion, Paragone, and the Ontology of Painting explores the pivotal role of doubt in understanding the work of Peter Paul Rubens. Focusing on his easel paintings from the 1610s, this book argues that Rubens engaged with the era’s most pressing intellectual debates…
The Burgeoning European Print Trade
The Burgeoning European Print Trade The Distribution of Prints via the Plantin-Moretus Press of Antwerp By Karen L. Bowen, Dirk Imhof The European print trade is an evocative topic. Not only art historians, but social, cultural, and economic historians all agree that it was of vital importance in the Early Modern Period, as the conveyer…
Gardens in Revolution. Landscapes & Political Culture in France, 1760-1792
Gardens in Revolution Landscapes & Political Culture in France, 1760-1792 Gabriel Wick France in the mid-1760s witnessed what the aphorist and garden lover the prince de Ligne hailed as “La révolution du goût” – the revolution of taste. A small number of dissident and philosophically minded aristocrats remade their gardens in the bizarre and eccentric…